Beyond Pink and Blue: The Impact of Gender Stereotypes
Source: The Advocates
In this lesson, students will learn about how gender stereotypes affect them and explore how gender is portrayed in the media.
Grade Level: 3-7
Subject Area: Bias and Discrimination, Education, Women’s Rights
Source: Advocates for Human Rights
A toolkit with lesson that analyzes the impact of media on the rights of girls and young women from an international human rights framework, specifically the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Girls have the right to safe, self-directed, and healthy lives; free of coercion and sexual exploitation.
Grade Level: middle – high school
Subject Area: social studies, language arts
Exposing Gender Stereotypes
Source: Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy, 2012
Addresses gender stereotypes in personal perception and media representations.
Grade Level: middle school
Subject Area: social studies, all-school activity
Female Identity and Gender Expectations
Source: Teaching Tolerance
Examines how gender stereotypes affect sense of identity. Lesson include “Girls’ Attitudes About STEM Careers: Similarities and Differences Among Race/Ethnic Groups,” “Gender and Jobs—Women in the Workforce,” “The Importance of Female Voices,” “Legislating Equal Access.”
Grade Level: middle – high school
Subject Area: social studies, all-school activity
Gender Doesn’t Limit You
Source: Teaching Tolerance
Each lesson in this six-lesson unit addresses a different form of gender bullying: peer exclusion, role exclusion, teasing about gendered activities, biased judgments, gendered beliefs, highlighting gender.
Grade Level: middle – high school
Subject Area: social studies, all-school activity
Gender Equality
Source: UNICEF
Units with lesson plans, stories, and video that helps raise student awareness of the importance of gender equality.
Grade Level: middle – high school
Subject Area: social studies
Life Planning Education: A Youth Development Program
Source: Advocates for Youth
Lesson plans on topics such as Gender Advantages and Disadvantages, Jobs for Women and Men, Media Messages and Stereotypes.
Grade Level: elementary – high school
Subject Area: social studies Pressing Human Rights Issues in Africa
Source: HRE USA
Students will be introduced to several pressing human rights issues that are occurring in countries in Africa, and then work in groups to research and create a report on possible ways to improve the human rights situation and present their plan of action to their peers. This lesson is intended to be a follow-up after an introductory lesson on human rights has already taken place.
Grade Level: high school
Subject Area: social studies
Think outside the Box
K – 2 or 3-5
Source: Teaching Tolerance
Explores gender identity and stereotypes and their harmful effects.
Grade Level: K – 5
Subject Area: social studies, all-school activity
Toys and Gender
Source: Anti-Defamation League
Examines how toys are influenced by gender stereotypes and how children and their families are impacted by those messages.
Grade Level: lower elementary
Subject Area: social studies
Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice: Exposing Gender Bias
Source: Teaching Tolerance
Examines stereotypes of women from photographs.
Grade Level: middle – high school
Subject Area: gender studies, social studies
Watch It: Examining and Critiquing Gender Stereotypes in the Media
Source: Teaching Tolerance
Helps students analyze and critique messages about gender that they get from various media. Students in younger grades will focus on toys and toy advertisements, challenging themselves to think past what advertisements tell them about their gender identity. Older students will begin to consider the notion that gender is, at least to some degree, socially constructed. They will also critique media that constructs gender in limiting and sometimes debilitating ways.
Grade Level: Pre-K to lower elementary
Subject Area: social studies, language arts
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a ?: Moving beyond Gender Barriers in Our Lives
Source: Anti-defamation League, 2008
Explores gender roles, especially in the workplace
Grade Level: elementary
Subject Area: social studies
Write Right: Using Creative Writing to Counter Gender Stereotypes in Literature
Source: Teaching Tolerance
Allows children to look at one or more picture books that counter gender stereotypes. After discussion of the book, children will engage in a creative writing activity geared to fostering individual identity and resisting social definitions of what and how a boy or girl “should” be.
Grade Level: Pre-K to lower elementary
Subject Area: social studies, language arts